The present invention broadly relates to winding stations for substantially flat products and, more specifically, pertains to a new and improved construction of a winding mandrel for a coil or wound package formed from flexible, substantially flat products, especially printed products, as well as to an apparatus for supporting such a winding mandrel.
Generally speaking, the winding mandrel of the present invention comprises a hollow cylindrical winding drum.
It is known to wind up the printed products output by a rotary printing press or rotogravure machine in imbricated product formation upon a winding mandrel (cf. for instance Swiss Pat. No. 559,691, granted Jan. 31, 1975, and German Patent Publication No. 3,123,888 corresponding to the U.S. Pat. No. 4,438,618, issued Mar. 27, 1984, as well as German Patent Publication No. 3,236,866 corresponding to the commonly assigned, copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 06/432,557, filed Oct. 4, 1982). The completed printed product coils or wound packages are then stored in an intermediate storage depot in order to be withdrawn therefrom at a suitable later time and transported to a processing station. The printed products are then removed from the storage coil or wound package at this processing station by unwinding.
In the solution known from the previously mentioned German Patent Publication No. 3,236,866, corresponding to the aforementioned copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 06/432,557, the winding mandrel is journalled in a mobile frame or stand and remains connected therewith. This facilitates both the transport of the winding mandrel together with the coil or wound package and the coupling and wound package and the coupling and uncoupling of the winding mandrel to the winding and unwinding station. However, this requires a considerable investment since a great number of such construction-intensive mobile frames are required in service, which also remain occupied for a more or less long time interval in the intermediate storage depot. Furthermore, the storage of both the empty frames and the frames carrying a printed product storage coil or wound package require a relatively great amount of space.
The winding mandrel known from the Swiss Patent No. 559,691 previously mentioned comprises a hollow cylindrical winding drum which must be mounted on a drive shaft for winding and unwinding the printed products and whose diameter corresponds to the inside diameter of the winding drum. Mounting the winding drum on and unmounting the winding drum from the drive shaft is inconvenient and also requires a certain amount of care. Furthermore, the winding mandrel must be precisely made in order to have a good seat on the drive shaft.
In order to facilitate transport, the winding drum of this known winding mandrel is provided with end flanges or cheek plates which are constructed as bearing or running flanges. Due to these lateral cheek plates, the efficiency of exploitation of storage space for the empty winding mandrels is, however, unsatisfactory. Furthermore, the fabrication of such winding mandrels is relatively complicated.